U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his allies in Congress have blamed the deadly New Orleans truck attack on President Joe Biden’s border policies, despite the attacker being a U.S. citizen.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that the attack was proof that his warnings about the dangers of open borders and uncontrolled immigration were correct. He claimed that the crime rate in the country is at an all-time high and that the attack was a “violent erosion of Safety, National Security, and Democracy” due to the Biden administration’s handling of the nation’s borders.
Other Republicans, including Donald Trump Jr. and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mike Johnson, Eli Crane, and Carlos Gimenez, echoed Trump’s claims, saying that the attack was a result of lax border security and calling for the border to be “shut down” and for more action to be taken to secure the nation’s borders.
However, Fox News later clarified that the suspect in the attack was a U.S. citizen and not an immigrant who crossed the border from Mexico. Despite this, Trump continued to push his narrative, saying that the attack was a result of the Biden administration’s “Open Borders Policy” and that it was only a matter of time before the country was plagued by more attacks like this one.
The facts, however, show that the majority of migrants who attempt to cross the border are not on the terrorist watchlist and that the number of attempts has not increased significantly during the Biden administration compared to the Trump presidency.